Laszlo Rajk

Laszlo Rajk (8 March 1909-15 October 1949) was Interior Minister of Hungary from 20 March 1946 to 5 August 1948, succeeding Imre Nagy and preceding Janos Kadar.

Biography
Laszlo Rajk was born in Szekelyudvarhely, Transylvania, Austria-Hungary (now Odorheiu Secuiesc, Romania) in 1909. He was born of a Jewish family and educated in Budapest, and he became a communist while a student. He joined the International Brigades to fight in the Spanish Civil War, but became a prisoner-of-war and returned to Budapest only in 1941. He then became active as the Secretary of the illegal Hungarian Communist Party until he was captured by the Germans in 1944. Released from a German concentration camp only in May 1945, he soon became Minister of the Interior, in which capacity he organized a terror campaign to facilitate the communist takeover of the state in 1948. Shortly afterwards, he became one of the first victims of Joseph Stalin's purges, despite his previous unstinting loyalty to the despot. He was moved to the Foreign Ministry and replaced by Janos Kadar, and on 19 May 1949 the show trials had been prepared sufficiently for him to be arrested. He was persuaded to admit to false charges, ostensibly for the good of communism. He was duly sentenced to capital punishment and executed. The lavish funeral after his posthumous rehabilitation on 6 October 1956 was attended by over 200,000 people, and marked one of the triggers of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.